


The future is worth the fight

by ArandoraStar



Series: The awful daring of a moment's surrender [5]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3, Fallout 4
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Capitol Wasteland, F/M, Little Lamplight, M/M, MacCready and Deacon almost bang, MacCready is a great father, MacCready's life story, Multi, Romance, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Tragic Romance, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 06:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9110617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArandoraStar/pseuds/ArandoraStar
Summary: Robert Joseph MacCready was born with two names stamped on his left wrist. One of the marks, the bottom one, is in the same sort of messy scrawl he’s used to seeing scribbled across most wastelanders’ wrists; bright red (now gray) and small print with slanted letters that seem to be climbing over one another, as though written in a rush. The other name on his wrist, however, is unlike any handwriting he’s seen in his entire life.orFour times Robert Joseph MacCready had his heart broken, and one time it didn't need to.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, I've decided that I'm going to use comic book quotes for chapters focusing on MacCready. This one comes from a quote by Martian Manhunter.
> 
> “The future is worth it. All the pain. All the tears. The future is worth the fight.” – Martian Manhunter, Vol. 2, #1,000,000.

Robert Joseph MacCready was born with two names stamped on his left wrist. He assumes this at least. He was two years old when his sham of a father dropped him at the front door step to Little Lamplight in the middle of winter.

One of the marks, the bottom one, is in the same sort of messy scrawl he’s used to seeing scribbled across most wastelanders’ wrists; bright red (now gray) and small print with slanted letters that seem to be climbing over one another, as though written in a rush. _Lucy Anne Gale._

There aren’t many people in the wasteland who can read or write, and sometimes, the only thing they’re ever taught is how to scribble their own name. His obsession with comic books saved him from the same fate. Faking nonchalance while still hanging on every word Joseph had to say during lessons back at Little Lamplight became an art to him. Once he learned how to read, he’d stay up all night under the yellow glow of one of the cave lanterns, immersing himself in the thrilling tales of _Grognak_ or _The Silver Shroud._ He had to hide his magazines in a crevice on the back wall of the cave so that none of the other kids would steal or destroy it. This was also where he hid his skin mags when he grew older.

The other name on his wrist, however, is unlike any handwriting he’s seen in his entire life. It’s the same bright red color Lucy’s used to be, but the letters in the name are large and loopy. He’s never seen anyone write like it before. The closest thing he’s seen to it would be some of the lettering on the covers of the books Joseph used to collect. It’s pretty, and he’s never admitted to anyone in his life that the top name written in fancy letters at the top of his left wrist was his favorite. _Grace Lee Hawthorne._

The kids back at Little Lamplight used to give him all kinds of shit for having two soulmarks. Most of the kids in the cave didn’t have one, but a few of them did. Those that were unlucky enough to have a name printed on their wrist were made fun of relentlessly. It was considered a weakness in the cave to have a soulmate. MacCready had two, and that made it worse for him.

Yeah. He was tormented, albeit in good nature, relentlessly until he was ten years old and punched Princess in the face, taking the mayorship of Little Lamplight for himself. No one said shit about his two soulmarks then.

There was a doctor at Little Lamplight named Lucy who didn’t know her last name, and was convinced for the longest time that she was MacCready’s soulmate. She didn’t have any marks, but she was nice, and he liked her. She saved his life and his legs once when he got trapped under rubble during a cave in while harvesting fungus. Back then, he figured what he felt for her was love. He didn’t really know much about it, but she was kind and funny and pretty. She had the darkest hair he’d ever seen and eyes that matched.

He lost his virginity to her the night before he turned sixteen. He asked her to leave with him and she said no. She wasn’t going to turn sixteen for another year and didn’t want to leave early to be with him because she was training a new doctor to take her place. The plan was for him to go to Big Town, get a job, and then wait for her to age out and meet him. That never happened. She died in a cave in a few months after he left and he didn’t feel a thing. He didn’t find out until a year later, when she never showed up and he went back to Little Lamplight to ask the new mayor where she was and they told him she was dead. That was the first time he felt his heartbreak.

The second time his heart broke was when he met the actual Lucy printed on his wrist. She was beautiful by Wasteland standards. Light blonde hair, warm brown eyes, long legs, smooth tanned skin, and a laugh that sent chills down his spine. He met her in Megaton. She was looking for a hired gun to accompany her to Rivet City. He told her he was a soldier and would do it for free. She smiled and her teeth were clean and straight.

He fell in love with her on the journey. She was smart, so smart, and loved comic books almost as much as he did. She called him Bobby and told him he had the prettiest eyes she’d ever seen. She was three years older than him and talked about wanting kids and her family farm. She painted the prettiest picture of a future he never imagined he could have. He’d been working as a mercenary since he left Little Lamplight two years before, and there wasn’t enough money in it. He didn’t imagine there would be much in farming either, but if it meant having her, he’d live the rest of his life with nothing in his pockets.

It was odd though. She knew his name, and he, hers, but she never mentioned anything about soulmarks. He didn’t either, worried that perhaps she held the same opinion as him – that they didn’t matter – and he didn’t want to pressure her into talking about it. It wasn’t until later – weeks after they got to Rivet City and she ran into the arms of another man, who was kind and genuine and thanked MacCready for protecting his soulmate, for bringing her back home, who offered him a job with steady pay guarding his business’s caravans, who MacCready couldn’t hate even though he tried so hard to – that he caught a glimpse of her left wrist and didn’t see his name written there. It was like losing Lucy all over again.

He ended up accepting the job her husband, Mark, offered him. It was a pathetic excuse by a lovesick fool to be closer to the woman he couldn’t have. He worked for the man for almost a year, even eventually learned to call him friend. And then the truth came out that the caravans he was guarding were transporting stolen chems. Mark was murdered in his and Lucy’s home by one of the big chem bosses of the Capitol Wasteland and his gang. Lucy would have died too, if she had been home. Her name was marked and it was all MacCready could do to smuggle her out of Rivet City.

She was broken, both her heart and soul. It hurt him to see her so devastated, so light-less. She didn’t speak for weeks. She cried and cried and collapsed in agony more than once. MacCready had to carry her for hours more than a few times.

They made their way to Big Town, the only place he could think of where he knew he had people who could help them, and a place he knew they wouldn’t be found. It had become a thriving community once the Lone Wanderer liberated the area of super mutants and slavers. They made it there in three days and holed up with Joseph and his sister Penny. Joseph had left Little Lamplight when MacCready and Penny were twelve and started a schoolhouse in Big Town for any kids in the area – including a few who ventured out of the caves to learn. Being around kids pulled Lucy from her silence.

It took months before she smiled for anyone other than the children in the schoolhouse. It made MacCready ache every time he saw it, remembering the way she talked about having children with that gleam in her eye. He remembered hearing more than once the thumps and groans that filtered from her bedroom back in Rivet City, and knew from speaking with Mark that they were trying to have kids. The look in her eye as she watched the children running around Joseph’s schoolhouse confessed that she believed that future gone from her.

He couldn’t stand seeing her broken, and in a moment of drunken weakness, confessed the secret he had been hiding since he met her. She met his news with several days of silence. He spent those days in mental agony, sure he had lost yet another woman he loved. But then, she came to his room one night and they made love. It was pure and heartfelt, but MacCready wasn’t blind enough to not realize that it was a distraction for her.

It continued like this for a few months, him desperately in love with her, and her coming to him when she needed comfort. He knew what it was, but he’d been in love with her since he met her and would take whatever she was willing to offer. It didn’t take long for her to get pregnant, and when she gave him the news, her smile was as pretty and genuine as the first time he had seen it.

They got married at the schoolhouse a few weeks later. Joseph officiated it and the whole town (all fifteen residents) attended. She gave him a little wooden toy soldier that night as a wedding gift. She’d carved it when they first met, intending to give it to him as a birthday present and had never been afforded the opportunity.

Duncan’s birth was a nightmare. Lucy was in labor for almost two days before he finally entered the world. She bled so much. The town doctor was worried she wouldn’t make it. MacCready paced a track in the ground outside the clinic building, and chewed his nails until they bled. He held her hand when she finally pushed him out and cried harder than he ever had in his life when he held his son for the first time. He had the slightest tuft of blonde hair and hazy blue eyes that MacCready only got one look at before the boy squeezed them shut tight and screamed for hours.

Duncan was a sickly baby. He was always underweight and cried constantly. Joseph referred to it as “colic” and said he would grow out of it. But he never did. He caught colds often, and had constant ear infections. MacCready lost more sleep in Duncan’s first eight months than he ever had in his life.

Duncan had just turned nine months old when he caught some sort of illness that had him puking up anything they tried to put in his stomach. This went on for days before they decided to make a trip to Temple of the Union, where they had heard a doctor from Rivet City was living. It was a day’s journey to the settlement, and they ended up stopping for the night in an empty subway station for the night.

It happened quickly. MacCready was taking a shift keeping watch while Lucy and Duncan slept. Duncan woke and began crying shrilly, his poor little tummy aching so badly. MacCready picked him up from where he lay next to Lucy and took him to the other side of the subway in an attempt to not wake her. Neither of them had slept properly in months and she was so tired from traveling. He was too, and because of this, his senses were dulled and he didn’t hear the groans of the ferals until it was too late.

They poured from the tunnels of the subway like ants, descending upon the little campfire in seconds. MacCready only had the briefest of moments to make a decision, and the look in Lucy’s eyes when he hesitated to run, even for only a second, made him almost hate himself.

“SAVE HIM!” she screamed, even as the ferals fell upon her. “Run, Bobby!”

And so he ran. For hours, he kept his sobbing son clenched to his chest, desperately praying that the adrenaline pumping through his veins would last until he at least made it to the Temple. If he collapsed, if he allowed the agony of losing her to touch him, he’d be lost, and Duncan would die.

It was a miracle that he made it to the settlement at all. He arrived weaponless, breathing heavily, heart beating rapidly. He and his son were drenched in dirt and blood and sweat and it was all he could do to shakily ask the nearest person which way to the doctor. The man showed him the way and MacCready passed his son on to the worried looking doctor, who didn’t even manage to get out his concerned question before the pain hit him directly in the chest and he collapsed into darkness on the floor.

That was the third time his heart broke, only he felt it in his soul too. Losing a soulmate is the single most painful thing anyone in the world will ever feel. He knows this now. It took nine days for the pain to leave his chest and for the second name on his wrist to fade to gray. MacCready sobbed the entire time. Not from the pain, but from the loss. The absolute, sudden, inexplicable loss.

It took another two weeks at Temple for Duncan to get better. The ex-slaves of the settlement were sympathetic to MacCready’s situation and sent escorts with him back to Big Town. Duncan spoke his first word on the trip home. _Dada_. MacCready cried into his son’s hair the entire night.

Life was harder after Lucy died. There was a part of himself that felt empty with her gone, a deep, dark part that wished that it had been him instead of her, or that he and Duncan might have been better off dying with her. But then Duncan would learn a new word, or take his first step, or grin up at MacCready with that adorable gap between the teeth growing in. He’d laugh and clap his hands, dancing to whatever song Penny was humming, or would send his father the most wide-eyed expression when he read comics to him, using a different voice for each character. And MacCready would realize that his son was the greatest love he’d ever been given.

Duncan was three and a half when the blue spots showed up on his skin. None of the doctors in Big Town or Temple could figure out what was going on with the small boy. Megaton had no answers either. It took a trip back to the city where MacCready swore he’d never return to discover that his son had contracted a rare and deadly disease, one that would slowly kill him. MacCready’s heart broke for a fourth time when he realized there was nothing he could do for his son, his beautiful, bright, happy son.

He was tired after that; tired of all the heartbreak and the bad luck that seemed to follow him everywhere he went. He wasn’t sure what atrocities he’d committed in a past life to deserve all the bad things that had happened in this one. He thought more than once about killing himself, but leaving his son behind for an act so selfish was repulsive, and he banned the thought from his mind.

He was drunk in a bar when a stranger told him he’d heard of a cure for the disease Duncan had. His friend had contracted the disease too, and a vaccine from Med-Tek cured him of it. The closest Med-Tek facility was in the Commonwealth of Boston, though, which was a month’s journey away. MacCready packed his bags the next day.

Joseph and Penny agreed to watch Duncan while MacCready was away. He would send updates weekly on the caravans that traveled between the Commonwealth and the Capitol Wasteland. He joined up as a guard with one of the caravans heading that way and was on his way to find the cure to save his son’s life two days after he spoke to the stranger.

Getting to the Commonwealth was easier than he expected. They didn’t come across too many dangers, at least none that he couldn’t handle. A few raiders here and there and a yao guai or two. It took just under a month to make it and he wasted no time splitting with the caravan at a settlement called Goodneighbor and making his way North to where the research facilities were.

It was overrun by ghouls, real nasty ones. He ran out of bullets not even halfway through the building and had to retreat. He nearly lost his life. He practically dragged himself back to Goodneighbor, where he had to trade half his supplies for just a case of bullets. He returned back to Med-Tek the next week and was chased off again. All he could think about on the way back to Goodneighbor was that he had failed his son, and that he would die because his father wasn’t strong enough.

He ran into a group of gunners on the way. He’d heard of them before in his travels. A group of organized mercenaries who weren’t more than glorified raiders. But they were loaded down with weapons, ammunition, and supplies, and he had a dying son. So, he joined them and spent the next six months of his life killing people for caps. It was soul-shattering work, and he hated himself more during that time than he ever had in his life. But it was his only option, the only way he could afford to gather the supplies needed to take on Med-Tek.

A high paid job sent him to the outskirts of the Commonwealth with a group of three other gunners. He didn’t know the specifics, but was told he was to stand as backup and protection. They were sent to bully a man into splitting the proceeds from his produce trade with the local gunner outpost. The man refused, and so the other gunners dragged his family, a wife and two kids, one daughter and one son, out of the house and forced them to their knees in front of him. He agreed after that, but the gunner in charge killed his son anyway. MacCready left the gunners the next day.

He went back to Goodneighbor, where he once again spent all of his caps on ammunition and supplies for an assault on Med-Tek. He made his way North and tried again. He got further this time, all the way to a room with a locked door and a terminal so advanced, he couldn’t hack it even if he knew how. He trudged back to Goodneighbor, defeated and tired.

There was a letter waiting for him when he got there. Daisy, one of the local merchants, had been delivering letters to his son in the Capitol Wasteland. Joseph had written him. Duncan had received his soulmark. MacCready cried himself to sleep that night.

The next day, he decided to set himself up as a mercenary. He wasn’t going to give up. Not on his son. Not when his son could have such a bright future ahead of him. He made a promise to himself and to his son that day that he would be a better person, that he would work to make sure that Duncan’s future was a good one.

Most of the jobs he was hired for were for protection, a guard for a caravan or an escort across the Commonwealth. He cleared out a few super mutant and feral nests for settlers who had the money to pay him, and once or twice he roughed someone up as a threat. But he never accepted the contracts that requested he kill someone. He wasn’t going to do that anymore.

He was well on his way to a nice buzz when he met the handsome man in sunglasses. He’d seen him around, mostly in the bigger settlements of the Commonwealth. He had a hunch the man worked for someone powerful. It was obvious he was a spy, even though he tried his damnedest to blend in everywhere he went.

He approached him while MacCready was sat up at the bar in the Third Rail. Offered to buy him a drink, smiled charmingly at him and sat closer than necessary. MacCready knew what the man was doing. He wanted information, and figured seducing the young sniper would be the best way of garnering it. He didn’t call the man out, not when he gave him a false name, not even when his hand grazed MacCready’s knee just so. He allowed him to play his game, and went along with it.

He wanted to know about the gunners, specifically, he wanted to know why MacCready left. It wasn’t a hard question to answer, but he knew whatever his response would be would determine what happened next.

“Because people like the gunners are what’s wrong with the Commonwealth. They think they deserve anything they want, and don’t care what it takes to get it. People don’t deserve anything except the chance to build a life for themselves, and they don’t deserve someone else coming in and taking what they’ve built from them or telling them how to build it.”

“That’s almost profound,” the man responded, his lips curved just slightly into a smile.

MacCready shrugged in response, downing the whiskey in front of him that the man had paid for. He turned to the man and leveled him with a stare. “I know you aren’t sitting here because you want to fuck me. So, do you have any other questions you need answered for your super secret organization, or can I go back to getting piss drunk?”

The man’s grin had widened in response and he shook his head. “Kinda want to fuck you now.”

“Not happening,” MacCready had retorted, even though his face flushed and his pants tightened in response to the man's wicked grin. “Get lost.”

The next morning, he took a job that ended up with two innocents dead. He didn’t fire the bullets that killed him, but he enabled the man who did. He didn’t see the man in the sunglasses again. At least, not until he helped a beautiful woman tear down a gunner base to rescue him.

It was three months after he deserted the gunners that they finally found him. He wasn’t surprised, honestly. Had been expecting it since he left. It was just his luck that it happened while he was sick and not quite at his full capacity for fighting. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, just knew that his chest had been hurting him for two days. It sprung up so suddenly that he struggled to breath when it happened. His chest burned and ached and it took two full days for it to lessen. He was thankful that it didn’t happen when he was on a job, because he could hardly function at all with how painful it was. He had planned on seeing Dr. Amari the next day if the pain had still not faded.

He was most disappointed, however, that he had still not had luck at Med-Tek before they found him. He’d spent more time than he cared to count trying to learn how to hack computers so that he could finally break into the facility. He’d returned there several times since his first trip back after leaving the gunners, but still wasn’t able to crack it.

He knew they took their threats seriously and, though he hid it, was concerned about his chances of leaving Goodneighbor undetected. He didn’t have to worry about it long, because the most beautiful woman he had ever seen with eyes filled with silver fury stormed into the room and shot the two men in the head before they could finish threatening him.

She was stunning, really. He didn’t realize it until after she lowered his gun and he could look at her properly without fearing for his life. Dark hair tied back into a long braid, eyes the color of crystal clear water, short, much shorter than him, but more curvy than he’d ever seen a woman look like. Her shape was intensified by a tight blue vault suit, something he hadn’t seen in a long time.

It was shocking to see such a beautiful woman. He’d considered Lucy the prettiest girl he had ever seen, but this woman seemed almost alien in a world filled with trash and radiation. And she wanted to hire him. He’d have said yes, he thinks, even if she had offered him less than his asking price. But, no. This beautiful, alien, vault woman was also rich. Super rich, tossing almost five hundred caps at him as though they were worth less than the dirt under her feet. He hadn’t seen that much money since the gunners.

She was an absolute badass too, moving effortlessly and silently even though she had nearly died not two days before. And, she was the famed General Hawthorne of the Minutemen, who had taken back Quincy and destroyed the Institute. She was the reason settlements in the Commonwealth had clean water, an abundance of food, and incredible security. She was the one who brokered peace with the Brotherhood, who was no longer breathing down everyone’s neck, and instead, was working with the Minutemen to make the Commonwealth a better place. She was the reason raiders and super mutants, even the gunners, were steadily being pushed out of the Commonwealth. She was like a freaking superhero, a damn comic book character. Shit, she was everything any man could ever want in a woman, and the way she bent over in her vault suit or threw a knife through a man’s eye was literally spank bank material he would hold on to for the rest of his life.

He nearly had a heart attack when one of the gunners got the jump on her, pinning her to the floor with his hips and hands and pressing down into her with wicked promises. MacCready has never felt so satisfied as when his bullet tore through the man’s skull.

They burst through the door where her friend was being held captive and his breath caught in his throat when he recognized the man from the bar, Deacon, she called him, held in the grip of the gunner commander. He looked at MacCready with an expression he didn’t quite understand. Fear, worry, disappointment, hope? He wasn’t sure what the man was expressing through his gaze, but it moved from MacCready and settled on the woman to his right.

And then Commander Bones called her by her name. _General Grace Lee Hawthorne of the Minutemen._ His heart stopped and he couldn’t control the gasp that escaped him or the strike of lightening that shot down his spine. His face burned and stomach fluttered, but his hands didn’t shake. He held his weapon steadily, ready to pull it into position in a moment’s notice, as soon as it looked like the bastard might harm his boss’s, no, his _soulmate’s_ , friend.

His heart broke for the fifth time in his life when he realized that this Deacon character and his boss, _Grace,_ were soulmates. Because it’s just like the universe to give him two marks on his wrist, to let him actually meet them, which is not something most marked people in the wasteland can accomplish, and then to give them names other than his own.

He’s tried to believe his whole life that the marks on his wrist didn’t matter, that having a soulmark didn’t determine who you had to love. And it didn’t. But when it came down to it, when he was faced with meeting both of his soulmates and discovered that they had soulmarks that weren’t him, his heart cracked. Both times. Because even though soulmarks don’t determine who you have to love, they’re still a symbol of hope, one that no one could truly not cherish – not even the kids in Little Lamplight, who tormented those with marks, but were all secretly disappointed that they didn’t have one themselves. So, yes. He’d always secretly been thrilled at the thought that his soul belonged to two people. He’d looked forward to potentially meeting the people who shared a piece of his soul. And yes, it broke his heart when he found out he wasn’t Lucy’s soulmate, and it broke his heart to hear that Deacon was Grace’s.

It didn’t occur to him that she might have two. So, when she asked for his name, he told her it was Bobby. And when she asked him to meet her at the Castle, he agreed. Not because he wanted the money, but because he wanted to spend whatever time with her that she would allow, even if he wasn’t her soulmate. He’d take what she would give, just like he had with Lucy.

So, he waited for her like she asked him to. He stayed at the Castle until she finally showed up, with vengeance in her eyes and an army at her back. He’d never seen anything more dangerous or beautiful, and that almost broke his heart again right there.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't worry! His heart won't be broken for long. Grace and Deacon are going to mend it. 
> 
> (Not sure why I write such depressing shit. I'm a very happy person. Honest.)


End file.
